Tag Archives: New School

“It’s all dumb luck,” the Doctor’s Wife says, explaining her new theory to my mother. I’ve already heard the theory.
“What’s dumb luck?” asks my mom.
“Life. It’s all dumb luck.”
“Don’t you think that genetics has something to do with it?”
“Genetics is dumb luck.”
“What about education?”
“Dumb luck.”
“That’s not what you thought when you were younger.”
“Of course I did,” the Doctor’s Wife snorts.
“It was not dumb luck whether or not I got good grades. I was expected to study. Is it dumb luck if you study and then get good grades?”
“Well,” the Doctor’s Wife says. “It’s dumb luck that you had the sort of parents who made you study.”
They work quietly for a while, cutting up the pieces of apple, getting ready for the others to come.
“Aren’t we lucky?” the Doctor’s Wife asks.

The fœtus floats outside your window while you are having sex. It wants to know how many beads of sweat collect between your breasts and at what point, exactly, they begin their journey south, it wants to know if your eyes open wide or close at orgasm, if at that time your partner is holding your hand with his hand or your gaze with his gaze. It wants to know if your sheets are flannel or satin, if you lie on wool blankets or down comforters. And when fluids issue from the struggling bodies, with what do you wipe them up: Towels? Paper products? A T-shirt pulled out of the laundry? It wants to know if the bedside alarm is set before or after the lovemaking; it wants to stay informed, your love is its business.

kate moss saint tropez no tan lines. the huffington post reported that individuals engaging in bdsm sex suffer less anxiety and emjoy [sic] greater well-being than others. july emotional heat index. diamonds fur coat champagne. totally gorgeous sunsets. netflix under the drone of box fans. air conditioners reportedly in peak use on weekdays at 6pm. watching television online and wondering if my fashion has become normative and cinematic. when you start by imagining what it might be like, you step back, you think. how it makes someone feel. the experience of the product. this is what matters. this is it.

There was a time when my king thought of me before any other, when thinking of me was what hardened that instrument, that bold cock. There was a time when he thought only of taking me from behind as hard and fast as he could, as if by plunging deep enough, long enough, he could fuck his way into my soul. I love him with that painful, yearning kind of love that invades the body from some other place—could it be the soul?—and can only be satisfied by the act of sex. Back then, when he had me under his control, hands on my ass, fingers pressing into my flesh, I felt his love and I was happy. But these days he is distracted by her, by her, and her and her and her—by the great panoply of lovely creatures walking the earth.

Repetition is a way to manage time, to parcel time. I divided my time rigorously into manageable increments which grew smaller and smaller over time: the nocturnal wanderings, the swimming at night in the blue-nocturne, chocolate-covered Pim’s with raspberry filling while watching French television [anesthetized and lonely, a star-occluding white], wine.

This aether seeps into whatever soul, or vacuum, exists within you. I suspect depression is an evolutionary adaptation. When suffering becomes overwhelming, the anesthetized subject is immobilized, and thus prevented from destroying itself.